


The Dizziness of Freedom

by FyrMaiden



Category: Glee
Genre: Anxiety, Bad Boy Kurt, Break Up, Depression, Famous Blaine, M/M, Medication
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-14
Updated: 2016-08-14
Packaged: 2018-08-08 17:19:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7766608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FyrMaiden/pseuds/FyrMaiden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blaine is on a flight from LA to Columbus when he meets Kurt. He's standing in line for a taxi when he meets him again. And Kurt's not about to let him walk away a third time...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dizziness of Freedom

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Teilo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teilo/gifts).



> With wonderful thanks to boroniaserrulata and quirkyquantumqueen on tumblr for their help with this one. This is a better story for their assistance.
> 
> For the todaydreambelievers fic exchange, prompt: " Badboy and jealous/possessive: either Kurt or Blaine can be the badboy, jealous/possessive one. Would like to see this set when they are out of college."

Blaine Anderson doesn’t quite know how he would define celebrity if he were asked (and he’s been asked). He does know that he doesn’t like to think of himself as whatever that is. However, due to a windfall television role when he left college, he does have a small level of fame, a loyal following on Twitter, and his own tag on TMZ, the last of which he would delete if he could. Blaine is 27 years old, almost twelve months out of the relationship documented by the TMZ tag, and one thing is absolutely positive: he really isn’t looking for anything the night he meets Kurt Hummel.

It’s been a long, exhausting year for Blaine. The previous May, he’d been happily in love with the man he was sure he was going to spend his forever with. He’d been planning a wedding, choosing flowers and cakes, arranging the seating and colour schemes, and although he’d been quietly aware that his fiancé hadn’t been quite as invested, he’d put it down to the pressure of long work days and too little free time. Weddings are stressful. It made sense that he had let Blaine shoulder the planning. It had been fun, Blaine had found, being able to share small details with his fans on Twitter and Instagram, their excitement the mirror for his own that he’d been lacking a little.

Through June and into July came the persistent rumours about his fiancé that he had ignored and refused to Google, and which became harder to gloss over when his mentions blew up with photographic evidence, and by August he’d moved back to his childhood home, where there was less attention and less pressure to keep smiling when his heart was breaking.

He spent most of August ghosting through his own life. He’d been spending whole days asleep, too tired and emotionally destroyed to even think about waking up for longer than it took to pee, and that went on until Labor Day, when his mom took it upon herself to contact everyone in his phone book who could possibly help. Between them, they’d agreed that perhaps a therapist may be able to help, certainly a doctor, and – when the tears abated and he realised that his tightest jeans were almost a size too big – he had agreed that none of those things could hurt him more than he already hurt. 

It’s been a long, painful road to recovery. He’s had to adapt to being not in the place he thought he would be. Instead of the husband and the stage career, he’s living in his brother’s apartment in Los Angeles and he’s piecing back together the scattered fragments of his heart whilst he works on a second degree part time, this time in music therapy, all the while maintaining his profile with small screen roles when he can get them. In his spare time, he runs a blog that’s gained a lot of traction, where he talks about his experiences with co-dependency, falling in love with the wrong people, and how he’s learned to live with anxiety and depression. 

It’s the blog, not his acting, that has him on the path that will bring him to Kurt.

A school administrator from Ohio - of all places, he’ll joke later, though in the moment it’s more jarring than amusing - contacts him through his agent. She tells him that they’re having some type of ideas fair; essentially, they’re inviting guest speakers to come in to the school and talk to the students about issues affecting American youth.

He asks if he can think about it, and then calls his mom to talk it over.

Her tone of voice takes him right back to the time he he’d spent drifting around her house directly after the break up, when she’d sat beside him and stroked his hair and told him that it wouldn’t hurt forever, and he’d choked out a laugh and told her that that didn’t help at all. She can’t stroke his hair through the line from Allen County (Ohio, he’ll say, the very same), but her voice is soothing and gentle and calms the jackhammer panic in his heart. 

“Do you feel confident in your decision, Blaine?” 

“I don’t know, Momma,” he whispers. “I think so?”

“Just don’t rush into anything, sweetie. You’re allowed to tell them no.”

The thing is, he realises once he has the offer in writing in front of him, he doesn’t _want_ to say no. Because maybe, just maybe, if someone had told him when he was 15 that he was allowed to put himself first sometimes, he would have made different decisions to the ones that lead to his self-destruction. He has an opportunity here to do some of the things he wanted when he was that kid; he has the chance to make a difference, to _help_ people.

He confirms the dates, checks his schedule, and signs on.

He’s not planning on changing his life. He has no intention of doling out fragments of his shattered heart. But, if his experiences can help anyone else, then it will be worth the panic that yawns in front of him.

Right? 

 

Blaine’s flight leaves later than scheduled. He tweets about it, and then sends a text to his agent (‘Flight is delayed. Already cancelled the car.’) and then to his mom. ‘Don’t worry about picking me up, I’ll get a hotel. Love you.’ He feels like he’s 16 again as he turns the screen off and presses his phone and his fist under his chin, smiling to himself as he stares blindly out of the window at the gathering dark. 

It’s almost midnight when he lands in Columbus. The man in the seat across the aisle from him wakes slowly as they touch down, untucking his hands from his armpits and yawning so wide and so long that Blaine catches a glimpse of the silver stud nestling in the middle of his tongue. The man checks his phone, and his hands and wrists are covered in silver bracelets and rings. A death of crows flies up from his wrist and vanishes beneath the rolled up sleeve of his shirt, the birds growing bigger as they reach his elbow. The swoop of his hair is perfect, Blaine thinks, and tries to crush the wave of jealousy because his hair will never do that, stubbornly curly as it is. It’s been a thing since he was a child, and his brother had been so perfect, with his hair and his blinding blue eyes. Blaine doesn’t mean to stare, but he is. He knows he is, because there’s a benevolent smirk on the stranger’s face when Blaine catches his gaze again.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, and the man’s eyes narrow for a second. Blaine isn’t inherently nervous around strangers, but most of the strangers he’s found himself sitting across from recently haven’t looked like this one. Eventually the man shakes his head and plasters on a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. Those remain impassive and disengaged.

“Occupational hazard,” he says, and sweeps his hand over himself. The words alone seem friendly, but his tone sounds tired. Been there, done that, free pin with every forced smile. Blaine wishes he could find the right words to express himself, but that’s always been hard without a script to read from.

“I still shouldn’t stare,” he says. “No one wants to feel like they’re being watched and judged.” 

He would, after all, know how that feels. 

Blaine turns his gaze to his hands, studies his knuckles minutely and doesn’t see the way the stranger’s gaze sweeps over him in turn. Blaine is dressed for comfort, but his pants are still bright yellow, his ankles are still exposed, and his shoulders are still a little too big for the polo shirt he wears. When Blaine turns his head to look back across the aisle, the man’s head is inclined and he’s making a face that Blaine can’t read. 

“I feel like I’ve seen your face before,” he says, and Blaine blushes. 

“You might have,” he says, and swallows hard, decides to be brave. Who he is has never been a secret. “I was on the cover of ‘Out’ this month.” 

The stranger’s smile becomes a laugh and he nods his head. “Ah,” he says. “Yes.” He doesn’t say anything more, and then the cabin begins to empty. 

Blaine sees his face on the cover of the magazine left on the spare seat, and the blush in his face creeps beneath the collar of his shirt, burning hot. 

He doesn’t even know the stranger’s name, but he knows Blaine’s. He knows everything there is to know. It feels like everyone knows now. It’s just another truth Blaine is learning to live with.

In the long run, he thinks, it probably doesn’t matter anyway.

 

Blaine sees him again at the taxi rank. He’s got his headphones in, and he talks animatedly as he twirls one of his rings around his middle finger. Blaine finds himself touching his own ring finger, naked now. He swallows and ducks his head and joins the end of the line, uses his phone to find himself a hotel for the night. 

The man behind him in the line nudges him, and Blaine startles, glances around him. The man points to the front of the line.

“Your friend,” he says. “He’s been trying to attract your attention.” 

Blaine follows his finger, and finds the man from the plane waving him forward. “Come on,” he calls, and Blaine feels a frown flicker and then fade. He doesn’t know why, but he thinks he can trust him. 

Maybe he’s about to make a colossal mistake.

“C’mon short dark and scowly,” the man calls. “I’m going your way.” 

At least it’s a mistake he’s walking into eyes open, he reasons. That’s more than he can say for the last one.

 

Kurt.

He says his name is Kurt. 

Standing in the lights of the airport, he had seen that the stranger from the plane’s eyes were an unnameable blue, bright and piercing. He’d swallowed hard and told the driver the address of his hotel. The stranger had smiled and said nothing, only slipped into the cab beside him.

“What a coincidence,” he’d said, and Blaine had laughed, actually laughed and meant it. 

“I don’t think so,” he’d said. His companion’s full mouth widened into a smile, and he’d tangled his fingers with Blaine’s in the space between their thighs. 

“Maybe not,” he’d whispered, and Blaine had found himself entranced by the gentle lilt of his voice, a little high, a little breathy, entirely captivating. “What _do_ you want, Blaine?” he’d asked.

“Your name,” Blaine had replied, his mouth moving before his brain had processed the words. He’d blushed when he caught up with himself, and the man had laughed and squeezed his hand a little tighter.

“Kurt,” he’d said, and Blaine turned it over on his tongue, whispered it into the air between them. It had felt right in his mouth, and he’d found himself wondering what else would feel right in his mouth before the night was over.

Sitting beside him in the back of a cab, Blaine can feel the intensity of his stare, and it feels strange in a way that being looked at hasn’t in awhile. He turns his head and looks at him, and Kurt smiles back at him. He blinks and flicks on a smile, and Kurt smiles back. Blaine doesn’t do this, doesn’t hook up, doesn’t risk his brand, but there’s something about Kurt that makes him want to throw it all away. He’d been steady with his high school beau since he was a kid. He’s become America’s Gay Sweetheart precisely by _not_ doing this. He’s had sex with two people in his whole life - his boyfriend, and the man he’d tried to put his heart back together with (and failed).

He knows without any doubt that he’s about to make it three. One night, he rationalises. It’s been a long time since there was _anyone_. He deserves a night. 

He swipes his card in the taxi before he can overthink himself, before he can balk and run. He climbs out of the taxi, lets the driver get his bags from the trunk, and he smiles around the butterflies in his stomach as he extends the handle and heads inside. 

He asks Kurt to wait for him by the elevators, and finds himself surprised when Kurt obliges. He declines to leave his case with him, though. It’s combination locked, but he’s not stupid. He checks in as quickly as he’s able, and then, keycard in hand, he trails back to the elevators himself. Kurt’s mouth quirks up into a smile, and he takes the key from Blaine’s fingers.

“Floor?” he asks when the elevator _bings_ and opens, his voice a blast of sound in the hush of the lobby.

“Uh, five.”

Kurt presents the key to the security panel, and presses the button for Blaine’s floor. Blaine doesn’t know why, but Kurt taking control buzzes in his fingers and in his throat. He takes a steadying breath and curls his fingers around the handle of his case to give them something to do that’s not tangling in the front of Kurt’s beautiful shirt. 

He does let Kurt take his hand again in the hallway though, their fingers knotting together. He catches his lip between his teeth and tugs Kurt’s hand a little to indicate the way. The hour is late, and he’s tired, but he wants this as well. A little reckless and a lot dangerous, but he _wants_. He hasn’t wanted in so long. 

They barely make it through the door before Kurt has him crowded against the wall. Blaine manages to activate the lights, scrambling blindly for the slot for his card until Kurt helps guide his hand. After that, he abandons his suitcase and listens for the _thud_ of the door closing before he tugs Kurt further into the room. Kurt follows without protest, pulling the ascot from his throat as he goes. In the dim glow of the lights, Blaine can see that it’s covered in razor blades. 

He draws the curtains against the impenetrable dark, and turns back to face Kurt, who is kicking off his shoes and unbuttoning his shirt. Blaine shivers, slips his feet out of his dress shoes, and tries not to stare.

It hasn’t been _that_ long, has it?

As Kurt peels his shirt from his shoulders, Blaine pauses in removing his own clothes. His mouth goes dry at the sight of Kurt’s shoulders. The tattoo on his arm travels all the way to his chest, the crows flying up his arm fragmenting over his shoulder. The shards reform into the face of a woman on his pec. She's kind, and she's beautiful, and the shape of her face is echoed in-- 

“My mom,” Kurt says, glancing up at Blaine from beneath his lashes. He wears the same soft smile, has the same sharp cheekbones. “She died.”

“Is that what you're hiding from?” Blaine asks, and regrets it immediately. He has no right to Kurt's pain, just because his is in the world for everyone to read. Kurt surprises him, though. 

“Not only,” he says. “Death and I have walked hand in hand.”

“You should write that down,” Blaine smiles, and Kurt huffs a laugh as he moves further into Blaine’s space.

“You’re still wearing a lot of clothes.”

And then his hands are on Blaine, helping him with his belt and his buttons, his mouth sticky hot on Blaine's skin. The only noise Blaine remembers how to make is a guttural ‘Unngh,’ dragged from deep inside and swallowed easily by Kurt. 

Maybe, he thinks, his last rational thought for hours, maybe you can bury your wounds with enough denial. Enough armour. 

As Kurt's hands pull down the soft cotton of his underwear and the ball in his tongue licks up his dick, he wonders how well that's working out for the boy with death on his arms. 

 

Blaine wakes all at once. There’s no slow slide into consciousness, no moment of confusion. He wakes to the sound of his alarm, and with another body flush against his spine. He waits for the curl of guilt in his gut, for the hot press of panic that he’s grown uncomfortably used to, but it doesn’t come. 

“I can hear you thinking,” Kurt whispers, his lips brushing the nape of his neck. His hand splays wide and large on Blaine’s chest, holding him in place, and Blaine feels himself relax back against him.

Beyond the cheap hotel curtains, the early morning light is pale and hazy. It might be the same sun that rises here in Ohio as it is back home, back in California, but it feels different. It feels muted. 

Or maybe it’s just that he has muted Ohio in his mind.

Either way, he doesn’t feel inclined to move.

Kurt’s hand flexes and holds him firmer. He’d taken his jewelry off the night before, save for one heavy chain around his wrist which rests cool against Blaine’s skin. He moves his hand to touch it, runs his fingers over the plaque.

“What’s this?” he asks, twisting his head until he can see part of Kurt’s face. 

“A reminder,” Kurt says, his voice soft, tender in a way Blaine doesn’t expect but which settles in his bones all the same. 

“What does it say?”

Kurt doesn’t speak for a moment, and then he untangles their hands and pushes himself up onto his elbow. Blaine, who hadn’t realised how much he was leaning against Kurt, rolls onto his back with a soft ‘oof’. Staring up into Kurt’s eyes, Blaine has a flash of the past and a moment of mourning for the future he _should_ be living right now, but it passes easily and without incident. Kurt dangles the bracelet in Blaine’s line of vision, and Blaine reaches to spin the plaque to face him.

“I am a work in progress,” he reads. He bites his lip and looks away, and pushes the sheets further down his torso until his hip is exposed to the recirculated hotel air. He brushes his fingers over his skin, and then indicates that Kurt should look as well.

Because tattooed on his skin in white ink, pale against the natural tan, is the same phrase.

Blaine’s eyes disappear into his smile.

 

The morning can’t last though. Blaine has places that he needs to be, a schedule that he needs to keep. He doesn’t really have time for breakfast, but he manages to buy coffee and split a breakfast muffin with Kurt before he insists he has to hussle. Kurt smiles at him over the rim of his take-out cup - non-fat mocha, he’d said, and Blaine had raised an eyebrow but repeated the order the barista all the same - and asks as casually as he can where Blaine is headed.

“Uh,” he says, and takes a bite of his muffin, stalling for time. Kurt is dressed in the same clothes he wore yesterday, although his ascot is now tied around his wrist. Blaine can see there’s a chain around his neck, disappearing beneath the open buttons of his shirt. Blaine wants to press his lips to the exposed V of his chest, and reminds himself instead that this was a one time deal. He swallows his muffin and sips his coffee (medium drip with cinnamon, no milk), and says, eventually, “I’m speaking at a symposium type thing tomorrow. A little way from here.”

Kurt tilts his head to one side and narrows his eyes. Blaine shivers and looks down at his hands, goes to twirl his engagement ring, the way he had when he was nervous or worried, back when he wore it. It is, of course, not there. Kurt reaches out to still his hands, and Blaine breathes in slowly as the pressure grounds him.

“Where?” Kurt asks, his voice going quiet, and Blaine tries to read him but can’t.

“Lima?” It comes out like a question, too high, too breathless, and Kurt laughs, actually laughs.

“Turns out you are going my way,” he says. “I can give you a ride, if you don’t have a car booked?”

Blaine, who has been trying to work out how he will cope with saying goodbye to this man he’s known for 8 hours and been asleep with for five of those, manages a wobbly smile and nods his head. 

Maybe he’s still about to get killed and dumped in a ditch, but he wants to take every minute he can have.

Maybe now is the time to be reckless.

 

Kurt’s car is a 2008 Navigator. It’s approximately the same size as the room he has in Cooper’s apartment. He’s pretty sure he could fit his bed in there and still have room to get dressed.

He realises he’s said that out loud when Kurt laughs and lifts his case into the back. “You just got me out of bed,” he says. “Now you wanna move into my car? I promise, I’ve got a much nicer bed at home.”

Blaine flushes hot, and Kurt grins at him. “I’ve just gotta swing past my dad’s shop,” he says, “And then I can drop you off wherever you need to be?”

Blaine nods his head and climbs into the passenger seat, and tries not to blink in surprise when the CD player blasts the ‘Funny Girl’ revival cast recording into the air. Kurt turns it off quickly, and smiles at Blaine apologetically. Blaine demures.

“I saw it,” he says. “I was living in New York at the time, at school for performing arts? And yeah - the leading actress went to the same college as I did for a while. So we - my fiance and I - we went and saw her. She was so good.” 

Kurt’s smile is genuine, but he grips the steering wheel of the car so tight that his knuckles turn white.

“Rachel is very talented,” he says, and Blaine knows enough to change the subject.

They talk a lot on the drive, and Blaine finds that Kurt is surprisingly easy to talk to. He’s informed about the politics that affect him, angry about the things that aren’t being done or which aren’t changing fast enough, and he’s whip smart and funny. It's refreshing, and for whole bursts of the conversation, Blaine forgets that Kurt's knowledge of his life far outstrips what he knows about Kurt.

He can change that, though, if he just asks. “Tell me about you,” he says, and Kurt snorts and shakes his head.

“It's not like there's a whole lot to tell,” he says. But he talks anyway, and it eats up the minutes and the miles.

He tells Blaine that he was visiting a friend in Los Angeles, that she and her wife had recently given birth and had invited him to be her daughter’s godfather. Otherwise, though, he’s a Lima native. He fixes Blaine with that piercing stare. “Same as you,” he says. His tone is light, but Blaine still sighs. It's not that he resents _fame_ , not really – sharing his stories have brought him a lot of closure, a lot of relief. He just wishes there were at least one gay man in the entire Western hemisphere who didn't know everything about him or make him regret his honesty. Kurt's face falls for a split second at the exhalation, but then the cocky grin is back, his story filling the cabin of the SUV.

He meant to get out of Ohio, he says, and didn’t quite make it. He got on that plane to New York City with all of his hopes and dreams packed into pretty much a single bag. He'd even made it to a shared loft space in Bushwick, which he'd shared with –

It's not lost on Blaine, the way his voice falters and cracks at that point, and he looks away politely when he sees Kurt swallow hard and flex his fingers on the steering wheel again. Bitterness is, Blaine knows, consuming. He'd spent a long time being bitter at the man who broke his heart. Kurt huffs a breath and swears.

“It's been seven years,” he laughs, “You’d think I’d let it go. I shared a loft in Bushwick with Rachel Berry and another high school friend of ours, Santana.”

Blaine blinks, and then blinks again, and then he feels the grin that cracks wide across his face.

“You're serious,” he says, and Kurt nods his head.

“As cancer,” he responds.

“What happened?” Blaine asks, and Kurt's mouth becomes a flat line. Blaine wants to apologise, tell him he doesn't have to share anything if he doesn't want to, but Kurt is speaking again before he can get the words into the right order in his head.

He says he'd lasted six months before he had to admit that he couldn't make it work. He'd struggled to find a job that would pay the rent after their initial deposit ran out, his last hope for getting into NYADA hadn't worked out, and then – on top of being miserable and broke – his father got sick and his stepbrother had passed, and he had made the decision to go home.

“So here I am,” he says, gesturing grandly to the highway rolling interminably ahead of them. Blaine stares at it and thinks perhaps he understands. He'd had the same defeated feeling when his mom drove them back from the airport the August just past. Ohio had served him as the perfect metaphor. For Kurt perhaps it's the same. He frowns at the road and turns on the radio to fill the heavy silence. Blaine is grateful to not have to fill it with words.

When Kurt does speak, it's more measured, though the anger simmers loud. “It's not so bad,” he says. “I got my degree at community college. I help my dad run his shop, and I'm a damn good businessman and mechanic. I help make the costumes for the local theatre company, and I have a soloist spot with the gay men's chorus. It's just-

“You’re still angry,” Blaine says, and Kurt snorts a laugh and looks at him for a second that seems to stop time.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m fucking angry.”

Blaine nods his head and stares at the still-familiar rolling miles between Columbus and Lima. He remembers travelling many of these same miles with his dad when he was a student at Dalton Academy. Dalton burned down when he was 20, but its legacy lives on. It’s quiet in the car then, bar the barely audible buzz of the radio, until Kurt breaks the silence with a huff. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “Is there anything more I should know about you?” 

Blaine snorts a laugh. There’s nothing that Kurt needs to know in this relationship that will end somewhere in the next forty minutes. Nothing new, anyway. “My whole story is in a variety of magazines,” he says. “You need to be specific.” 

Kurt is quiet again, hums along to a song playing low on the radio. Blaine recognises the song. It’s old now, but he knows it all the same. When he was 18, he’d had such a _thing_ for Adam Levine. _Where are the plans we made for two,_ Adam sings now. It still catches in Blaine’s chest, his thumb sweeping over his bare ring finger. Kurt catches him and pushes his hands into his lap gently.

“No one special then?” he says, and it’s Blaine’s turn to press his lips into a thin line. He’s sure the answer to that question is on the internet for anyone who cares to look. His lovelife has been food for endless gossip since the break up. It’s been a year, and - despite the occasional picture of him out with Cooper, or with a colleague - there’s been no one he’s even really wanted to consider might be special. He says nothing and turns his face to stare out of the window.

“What kind of boy do you think I am?” he deflects eventually, and Kurt laughs, actually laughs.

“Well, we heard a lot of things about you Dalton boys when I was in school.” 

Blaine swears beneath his breath. His jaw clenches, but he does turn his head to study Kurt’s profile. It doesn’t look like he’s even aware of what he’s said. Of course that’s also out there, though, that he’d attended Dalton. If nothing else, though, Blaine is a professional, so he turns the corners of his mouth up into a grin that he hopes exudes the cockiness he’s trying for. 

“Yeah?” he asks, and Kurt turns his head slightly. Blaine sees in the morning sunlight something he’d missed in the low lights of the hotel and the dark of the airport’s parking garage. 

There’s pink running through the perfect chestnut upsweep of Kurt’s hair.

If he didn’t think Kurt was beautiful before, there’s no denying it now. He’s such a cliche, with his bangles and his attitude and his hair. And he’s such a contradiction, with his show tunes and his devotion to his family. 

And Blaine knows, in his heart, that the lurch of attraction he feels follows a pattern that has defined his love life to date. Because for all that his first boyfriend had worn a blazer when they met, it had been the edge of repressed rage that had drawn Blaine in. He understands that. Since he was 13 and left bleeding on the asphalt outside of his middle school gym, he’s understood what it is to be angry at the world.

“No one special,” he says, and Kurt’s smile brings his face to life.

“Good,” he says. “Good.”

 

Kurt is as good as his word. He stops by Hummel Tires and Lube, which makes Blaine blink and cant his head.

“My dad bought my first car from the owner,” he says. “I used to bring the damn thing through here for servicing.” 

Kurt says nothing, but he looks at him long and steady. 

“I know,” he says eventually. “Green Volvo.” 

Blaine shrinks back a little, a frown wrinkling his brow. Kurt smiles and pushes open the door of the Navigator, stops for a second when his feet hit the concrete. “I remember you coming in with your - I assume he was your dad? I used to hide in the back in my coveralls, wondering what it would be like to talk to you. You looked like you needed a friend. _I_ needed a friend.” 

Blaine doesn’t say anything, not sure how to organise his feelings. He knows there’s a difference between being recognised and being remembered though, and this encounter feels suddenly overwhelmingly lopsided. 

He also knows that his 17 year old self almost certainly did need more friends that weren’t the mostly straight but well meaning boys he’d gone to highschool with. That’s not entirely untrue of his adult life as well. 

“Is that why you caught me at the airport? Coz I need a friend?” 

“No,” Kurt says. “That was because you’re cute, and cute available boys don’t usually smile at me the way you did.”

Blaine nods, and his smile only turns up one corner of his mouth this time. So Kurt _had_ already known he was single. He’s not surprised. It takes less than no time to Google, and he’d read the ‘Out’ article whilst Blaine had napped. 

“I need to get to my mom’s,” he says. “Apparently you have my address on file.”

Kurt’s smile flickers and fades, and he closes the door quietly behind him.

 

After Kurt drops him at his mother’s, Blaine tries to put him from his mind. His moment of madness is over. It’s done. He tries to stop thinking about him, and meets with almost precisely no success. He heavily edits his speech, catches up on outstanding emails, has lunch with one of his best friends whom he gets to see so very rarely. Even Sam can see that something is bothering him, and Blaine tells him about hooking up with a man he met on his flight from LA.

“You did?” Sam asks, and Blaine stares at him over the top of his coffee mug.

“Yeah, I mean – he was cute, we had a connection,” he says, lowering his mug to the table. Sam's grin is wide, and Blaine understands that Sam isn't judging him, it's just that-

“You hooked up with a guy and you're okay walking away?”

Blaine nods his head, and then fiddles with the handle of his mug. Sam covers Blaine's hands with his own, and Blaine looks up to meet his eyes.

“No,” he amends. “He drove me back to my mom's place, and I decided for both of us, I guess, when I got out of his car and didn't ask for his number. It was a hook up, not a relationship.”

It sounds more like a question than he'd meant it to, but he can't take it back. Sam only grips his hand tightly.

They pay and leave shortly after that, and Sam grips Blaine's shoulder, pulls him into a hug that Blaine feels in his fingertips and at the ends of his toes. When Sam lets him go, Blaine thinks he knows what he needs to do. When he's finished his speech, he will take his mom's car and he will drive out to Hummel Tires and Lube and he'll lay himself on the line, let Kurt make any decision he wants.

If it's not the one Blaine would like, then he will learn to live with that. He has his blog and the friends he has made through it, and he knows from experience that he can keep breathing through a breaking heart.

He won't know unless he tries, though.

“I'll catch you again before I leave,” he tells Sam. “You should come visit. Cooper is barely around.”

Sam's smile is as wide and honest as it ever is, and he nods amiably.

“I'll try,” he says. “Be good to yourself, Blaine.”

They part then, and Blaine drives himself back to his mom's via The Lima Bean and the library; via all the places he knew when he was a child here, and later a teenager. The places he used to come with his boyfriend. He thinks that one day, maybe, he'll upload them to his blog. That he's from Lima isn't a secret. It'd be nice to share some of the happier memories of growing up here. 

When he gets home, he shows his mom the pictures. She smiles at him, and asks him what’s really bothering him. She’s always been able to read him, he realises. There’s no lying to his mother.

“Who is he?” she asks, and Blaine shrugs a shoulder.

“A guy,” he answers, and she sighs and squeezes his knee.

“What do you like about him?” 

“He’s not afraid of telling me he wants me.”

“What about when he doesn’t want you anymore?”

Blaine closes his eyes against the wave of panic, and blinks them open slowly. “I’ve learned a lot, Momma,” he says slowly. “History doesn’t have to repeat itself.” 

“So maybe you need to go get what it is that you want, Blainey,” she says, her smile soft. “Have a little faith that someone wants you for who you are, not what you are.” 

Blaine nods his head, and she pulls him against her, holding him gently until he relaxes. 

“I deserve to be loved,” he whispers, and she nods and kisses the parting in his hair. 

“You deserve to be loved,” she agrees. “And a year is a long time to hate yourself.” 

 

Kurt shows up at Blaine’s speech, which throws him a little. He has a plan, and his plan doesn’t involve Kurt being here now. It doesn’t involve Kurt taking a seat in the back, or his eyes not leaving Blaine’s for the entire duration of the event. Blaine isn’t sure if he means it as moral support or not, but Kurt’s presence here, now, when he had a plan of his own for how this day would go makes his heart race and his hands sweat. He does manage to do his job, though. He speaks clearly and eloquently on the subjects that are close to him - about being out in a relatively small town when he was still in school, about the early signs of depression and how he has learned to live with his own, and about the importance of openness and honesty in confronting your personal demons. 

When it’s over and he has answered all of the questions that people have for him, he slips away from the stage and through the doors so he can sit quietly for a moment before he can ask someone to go and tell Kurt that he will meet him outside by his car. When the quiet fails to calm the trembling in his hands, though, he calls his mom instead and asks her if she can bring him his medication from his bag in his room.

Of course, she tells him.

It takes her twenty minutes, and when she arrives, she’s almost stopped by security. Blaine hears the commotion and steps into the corridor, calls that she's with him. It's a talk in a high school gymnasium, not a press briefing at the White House. They let her back without much argument, and she levels one of them with a stare that Blaine is almost certain could kill. She doesn't say anything though, only digs in her purse for the bottle as she heads straight toward him, fussing as she comes.

“These are supposed to stay with you in case of emergencies,” she says, pressing his pill bottle into his hands.

“I know,” he says, and she sighs. Blaine isn't looking at her though, not really, because standing in the doorway arguing quietly but insistently with the guards, is Kurt.

When Kurt looks up, Blaine looks away, and Blaine hears the gym doors slam closed as the two people working security edge Kurt back enough for them to shut. Blaine swallows, and slumps back against the wall, and then there's a shout and cursing, and one of the security guards pushes the door open and asks Blaine if he can come closer.

“This man says he's with you,” she says, when Blaine is within talking distance. “But he hasn't got ID and he's not listed as a contact.”

Blaine's head is swimming, and part of him feels close to tears. He manages to jerk his head up and down though. “I know him,” he says, and Kurt's face is furious when they finally let him in. He softens at the sight of Blaine, though, and takes the pills from his hands, guides him gently back towards the quiet of the classroom they've set aside for the speakers.

When Kurt and his mom have him seated again, Kurt reads the label and parcels out one tablet. Blaine gestures to a jug filled with water on a table by the door, and Kurt presses the tablet into his hand before going to get him a cup of water to swallow it with.

“Is that him?” his mom whispers, and Blaine follows Kurt with his eyes, nods his head. “Handsome,” she says, and Blaine grins.

“Is that an approval rating?” he says, and wonders if he’s putting his cart in front of his horse. His mom laughs, and shakes her head. 

“I’ll leave that for your brother,” she says. “Or - I assume you’re thinking seriously about him?” 

Blaine watches Kurt walk back towards him, thinks about the care Kurt takes with him and how that could look, how that might look, going forward. 

He knows he needs someone who will touch him like he’s precious and treat him like he’s their everything. It’s been less than two days with Kurt, but he thinks - maybe. Maybe it could be that. 

“Yeah,” he nods. “I think I am.” 

 

They talk about it a lot, Blaine on his laptop in LA and Kurt on his in the office at the garage in Ohio. Mornings between classes for Blaine are early afternoons for Kurt, but they make it work as well as they can.

“I’ve been thinking about flying down,” Kurt says. They’re watching a movie together, and Blaine is very aware of how late it’s getting for Kurt. 

“When?” Blaine asks. Part of him means _what_ not _when_. He’s sure he’s misheard. They haven’t seen each other in person since the speech. He hadn’t even let Kurt drive him back to the airport, just in case of paparazzi. There’d been no need, he’d explained, to expose Kurt to that over something that could be nothing. And now Kurt says he might fly out to California on a whim. For him.

Blaine’s breathing feels funny, and Kurt’s voice says, “Blaine, hey. Can you take a deep breath for me, honey?” 

As much as anything else, it’s the pet name that snaps Blaine out of his spiral. He blinks and takes a deep breath, and asks again, his voice shaky but clear, “When?”

“Well, the breathing I would definitely recommend you do now,” Kurt says, and his grin is rakish. Blaine huffs a laugh, and the tension dissipates. Kurt continues, “But seriously. You tell me when is good for you, but I’d like to say sooner rather than later? I just want to touch you again.”

Blaine looks around the empty apartment he’s sitting in, covered in Cooper’s laundry and stocked with limited food options, and takes another calming breath. He opens another window and checks prices.

“This weekend?” he asks, and Kurt’s laugh is warm and engaging. It makes Blaine smile when he switches back to the video window.

“Someone is keen,” he says, and Blaine breathes out, waits. Kurt’s face goes serious, and Blaine closes his eyes as Kurt says, quietly, “Do you want me to tell you what I’ll do to you when I’m there?”

“Yes,” Blaine whispers, and pops the button on his pants as Kurt’s voice fills the ensuing silence.

 

Blaine meets Kurt off of his flight from Ohio. Kurt emerges dressed in black, his hair swept up in a perfect pompadour. He has a small carry on case with him, and shakes his head when Blaine asks him if there’s anything else. 

“Just you,” Kurt says, and Blaine rolls his eyes.

He doesn’t protest when Kurt wraps an arm around him and presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth, though, claiming him in front of anyone with eyes to see.


End file.
